


"Clinging to a past that doesn't let me choose"

by aquila_black



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-05
Updated: 2010-11-05
Packaged: 2017-10-22 12:57:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/238241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aquila_black/pseuds/aquila_black
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ciel, brief character study in fic form. A fill for the 6th prompt battle, on the Anime_Manga comm on Dreamwidth. (The title was the request. The rest was my idea.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	"Clinging to a past that doesn't let me choose"

Ciel hated Christmas. The … tinsel and the crackers and the stupid hats and the endless invitations to glittering, vapid parties where people would give him a harder time than usual for not smiling enough. In short, he hated everything about it but the freezing wind that had been roaring through the desolate moors. Everything but the promise of silence, frost, and blessed stillness. At twelve, he was already too old for the mindless revelry. Too painfully aware of the things that Christmas, and all the ritual surrounding it, clamored to shut out – darkness. Solitude. Want. Death. And a freezing chill that never quite lifted. It settled in his ring and lived there; like recognizing like and coiling together. His parents had died in the fall …

And died in a blaze that he would see, behind his eyelids, until his task was complete and Sebastian closed them. He couldn’t long for it, really. And he couldn’t bring himself to want anything else. Destiny pulled him in a direction he’d chosen. It urged his footfalls on a long, solitary walk that had spanned generations – Phantomhives before him, Phantomhives behind. He couldn’t be sure how much of that feeling was illusion. The … sentimental wish to be a part, when it was quite likely that he was the end. The last. It didn’t matter. Couldn’t. His work was cut out for him, and he could see nothing else. He told himself that his single-mindedness was a choice; the disciplined, relentless pace he would like his parents to see, if they could watch him laying out his vengeance, but more than that – it was the implacable expression of a fury that could pour out of him till the end of time, without subsiding. This was what life was, for Ciel. What it meant to get up in the morning, and know his enemies breathed. Though every day, he advanced. Every day, his actions pressed them harder. And in the end, there would be death enough for all. They would thoroughly deserve it. So would he. If there was a certain symmetry to the execution, to … being a part of the evil blot that he swore to bury, he was too intent to concern himself with such aesthetics. The thought of clearing the chessboard, as it were, with one long sweep of his arm, and being swept away just as cleanly – he was reconciled to it. All his considerable resources, all his attention, were focused only on that. In a world of splendor and abundance, Ciel moved without feeling; without so much as a glance for his morning tea, save to pick it up by the handle. Revenge was the spirit that animated his face and hands, when want, need, and horror made an adult out of Ciel. It made him a proud master, though in owning Sebastian he had forfeit any claim to himself. His – choice, though perhaps his last. It was unclear what choice even meant, when everything he was and everything he believed locked him into it; when his past drew his future, and Ciel himself played a relatively small part in that.

For those who cannot forget, and those who cannot forgive, the only path is through darkness.

But Ciel’s grim ambition didn’t keep the people around him from wanting to disrupt things enough to pull him close; from wanting to babble about life and good cheer, and believe that this time, perhaps, the gaiety would be infectious. Not because, in a place like London, where the underworld seethed just beneath the notice of polite society, most of the consequential ladies and gentlemen actually believed in a season that was good and gay. But because they found it faintly comforting to pretend they did. As always, there were people who were quietly taken off the invitation lists (Lao was found in the river, you know) and people whom other people of quality no longer associated with (Viscount Druitt was accused of some beastly ritual or other) but the music boxes trilled out sweet, tingling notes long after the cake was crumbs and the smartly wrapped gifts were reduced to torn wrappers. And Ciel … would have none of it.

“Sebastian,” he said, looking up from the Queen’s latest assignment, “who do we know that still traffics in human organs?”

“At the moment, several people.” Sebastian smiled, gracious as ever. “Unless you mean to pay the Undertaker a visit, I’d advise against calling on anyone at this hour.”

“… we’ll start with him. And go from there.”

“I trust you haven’t forgotten that Miss Elizabeth will be expecting you at the theater?”

“No; I plan to arrive late.”

Mey-Rin was walking past, carrying a pile of laundry, and overheard. “On opening night?” she asked, with the plaintive longing of someone who had only ever seen the bustle surrounding the Theatre Royal, on Drury Lane.

“And any other,” Ciel said dryly, without taking his eyes off his butler. “Elizabeth enjoys holiday fare a good deal more than I do.”

Sebastian didn’t argue. He merely added a brace of pistols to master Phantomhive’s coach, and a change of clothes. They would have to be quick, and afterwards – it wouldn’t do to arrive bloody.

The only people who had any chance of reaching Ciel, of turning him even slightly from the course he had - chosen? - were dead. Each passing year brought him closer to them.


End file.
